


They Burst or Drift (Into Arms)

by gilligankane



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-17 07:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilligankane/pseuds/gilligankane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santana scowls at the stretchy latex in her hand and throws it, adding to the pile of red balloons at the base of her bed. They mean nothing right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Burst or Drift (Into Arms)

She puts the end of the balloon in her mouth and blows feebly. The balloon hardly inflates and when the hot air is forced back into her mouth she coughs violently, her lungs inflamed.

Santana scowls at the stretchy latex in her hand and throws it, adding to the pile of red balloons at the base of her bed.

They mean nothing right now.

Her father knocks at her open door, slipping inside before she can tell him to go away. “Are you going to stay in here all day, mija?”

Her scowl is her answer.

“You’ve been in here for the whole weekend,” he says, concern in his eyes as he hovers in the doorway.

She may be fourteen now but she’s still her daddy’s little girl.

“And I’m staying in here until I feel like coming out,” she says roughly, arms crossed over her chest defensively. “Or until Coach Sylvester makes me,” she adds meekly.

He chuckles softly and enters the room, shutting the door behind him. “Mija-”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She looks away when he ducks his head, trying to catch her gaze, and after few moments of silence, when she thinks he’s going to leave her alone, so she can die in peace  _finally_ , the bed dips and she can feel him sitting down next to her, getting comfortable.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time my heart broke?”

Her snappy insult dies on the tip of her tongue. She looks up, curious, and studies him intently. He doesn’t look like he’s jerking her around, she decides, so she shakes her head  _no_.

“I was thirteen,” he says quietly, like he’s sharing a secret just between the two of them. “She was the prettiest girl in my class and she made me feel like there was a swarm of angry bumblebees in my stomach. On Valentine’s Day, I took all the money I had saved up from shoveling old Mrs. Hernadez’s sidewalk and bought her flowers. Orange lilies.” He looks away and gives a half-shrug, the same motions Santana mimics perfectly. “The prettiest flowers for the prettiest girl,” he says, dropping his arm across the back of her shoulders.

“You got her flowers, big deal.”

 “It  _was_  a big deal, mija. I gathered all my courage and at the end of the day, walking to the church for after-school lessons, I went to give her the flowers, but she was already holding hands with Alejandro Martinez, the biggest, ugliest boy in the seventh grade. I felt like I was going to die, right in front of the statue of Our Lady Guadalupe, because I looked like a fool. A broken-hearted fool with flowers for someone else’s girl.”

Santana burrows into his side, her forehead against his steady heartbeat. She counts thirty strong beats before she wets her lips. “What happened?”

“I married her,” he answers quietly, lifting one of the two picture frames off Santana’s nightstand with his free hand, passing it to her. It’s a picture of her family: her mom and her dad and her little brother on the couch in the living room last Easter. The picture is a little lopsided, because even though Brittany took at least four or five shots, she didn’t hold the camera straight once.

“Mom was the prettiest girl?” Santana asks, awed.

“She still is. After you,” he adds. “But that’s between you and me, mija.”

She waits another fifteen heart beats and then she asks, “Did it feel like someone cracked you in half?”

He nods, his chin bouncing against her forehead. “It felt like the world was ending.” She feels his chest move away from her and then he’s handing her the second picture on her nightstand, of her and Brittany on their first day of high school, just a few months ago, smiling too-wide grins in the camera’s direction.

“I’m the one who messed up,” she admits. “I told Brittany that she should go out with this new kid, Mike Chang but it still feels like I’m all broken on the inside.”

Her dad shrugs again, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing, his joints creaking. “You know, mija, us Lopezs might be the fools in the beginning, but we’re the ones who end up with the girl.” He winks. “Try flowers.”

She sighs and opens her mouth, but her eyes catch on something first and she swallows her first sentence, smiling softly up at her father. “I have a better idea.”

\---

Santana presses the doorbell firmly, but she’s bouncing on the tips of her toes nervously and shooing her father’s car away when Brittany’s sister pulls open the door. The little blond, a spitting image of Brittany, sticks her tongue out quickly before crossing her arms over her chest and scowling.

It’s such a perfect scowl – and it really should be, after all the time Santana put into teaching it – that if she wasn’t holding a bouquet of deflated red balloons in her hand, skimming against the cement of the front steps, she’d reach over and mess up that perfect blond ponytail with a heartfelt smirk.

“No,” the little girl says. Even though she’s five and capable of saying more,  _no_  is still her favorite word, which is something that usually gets Santana to smile.

She nods at the blond, but moves around her into the house, ignoring the little hands gripping at the hem of her sweatshirt. When she starts up the stairs, the hands stop pulling and she’s free.

Brittany’s door says something in Dutch that Santana can’t pronounce, but can read and today it says  _Pity the fool_  in choppy boy “ _I obviously just copied this because I’m a stupid boy who doesn’t know Dutch_ ” handwriting. Her fingernails dig into her palm, but she knocks on the red door of Brittany’s bedroom – the slab of wood in bright contrast to the all white and maple wood of the rest of the hall – and waits almost three and a half seconds before pushing the door open herself.

Brittany looks up from where she’s curled up at the top of her bed and smiles so widely that the crack inside of Santana stretches a little further apart.

“Hey, stranger,” Brittany says, her smile only slipping a bit. “Lose your phone?”

Santana doesn’t answer. “These are for you,” she says, thrusting her hand forward, the balloons swaying limply.

Brittany’s smile fades completely. “I don’t understand.”

“I brought these for you,” Santana says, hand steady.

“But,” Brittany says slowly, “they’re dead balloons. They’re all wrinkly and, and they’re  _dead_ , Santana.”

She frowns at the balloons in her hand and for a minute – just a brief sixty seconds – she thinks she should have bought flowers instead, but then she sits next to Brittany, her back against the headboard and her shoulder against Brittany’s and nods slowly.

“I know they are. But I couldn’t blow them up,” she practically growls, angry at herself. “I tried, in the car, but I couldn’t do it. Only you can. You’re the only one. Mike can’t do it, and Puck can’t do it, and Matt can’t do it, and I can’t do it, but you can.” She takes a breath that shudders halfway through and then she feels something hot behind her eyes. “I don’t want to be left holding flowers for someone else’s girl when you should be my girl.”

Her well-thought out, emotionally-stable plan has been officially scrapped because she couldn’t even blow up the balloons and she blinks hard a few times before Brittany is putting down the TV remote and taking one of the strings attached to the balloon out of Santana’s fist and untying it enough so that the neck of the latex expands when she blows into it. Her pale cheeks flush red, reflecting the color of the balloon as it grows, until it’s bobbing in the air, barely brushing against the ceiling as Brittany ties it carefully around Santana’s wrist.

“There,” Brittany says quietly. “It’s alive.”

One corner of Santana’s mouth lifts in a smile. “It’s  _ali-i-i-ve_ ,” she stage-whispers. Brittany giggles, turning her head into the crook of Santana’s neck. “I didn’t mean to bring you dead balloons.”

Brittany nods against Santana’s collarbone. “I can teach you how to blow them up yourself,” the blond offers.

Santana shakes her head  _no_ , though, and Brittany hums happily into her sweatshirt. “I kind of like it anyway,” Brittany admits. “It makes me feel like you need me.”

“I need you,” she hears herself say hoarsely. “I need you. Mike doesn’t?” she says, more of an unsure question than a confident statement.

There’s a small pause until Brittany is lifting her head to look Santana in the eyes and nod. “Mike doesn’t,” she agrees. “No one else does.”

“Yeah,” Santana breathes out, turning on her side and tucking a loose strand of hair behind Brittany’s ear. The balloon string bumps along Brittany’s temple and they both laugh as Santana struggles to get it off her wrist. By the time she does, Brittany’s hands are locking behind her neck, pulling her in and as she rolls, knees on either side of Brittany’s knees, she reaches down blindly and finds the rest of the balloons, suddenly a little heavier in her hands, inflated just a slightly.

She smirks against Brittany’s mouth and throws it blindly, creating a small pile at the base of the bed.

They mean everything, but they’re getting in the way right now.


End file.
